Driving west on the Yellowhead highway from Smithers I spotted a black bear in the bushes, by the time I had pointed it out nearly poking Donna in the eye we had already passed it by. It seemed a good start of things to come. We don't really want a close encounter with a bear on foot but from the safety of Tilly would be good. We turned onto highway 97, the Stewart Cassiar highway. There is so little along this 450 mile road that the visitor centres hand out leaflets telling you where you can get gas (petrol), propane, etc. We had been told by others who had done this route that they saw bears every day, up to 9 a day! After 97 miles we turned off highway 97 to head to Stewart and had seen nil bears! The road to Stewart was something else, no bears but a great view of Bear Glacier and lots of hanging glaciers as well. Stewart is a small place and right on the ocean. The attraction here is the drive up the Salmon Glacier road. It was the 4th July, the American day of Independence as we crossed the border into Hyder, Alaska, USA. Alaska is cut off from the rest of USA (ignoring Hawaii) by Canada, but Hyder is cut off from Alaska by mountains. You can only access it by road from Stewart, Canada - the population of Hyder (6o approx.) really are cut off from the rest of their state and their nation. The road to the Salmon Glacier viewpoint swiftly changes to unpaved. As it is such a popular day out we thought the road would be in quite good condition - we were wrong. The 22 miles took us around 2 hours one way, but boy was it worth it. Even though we have a pick up truck we wobble a lot on uneven roads because of the camper on the back and some sections of badly potholed roads were painfully slow. On the return we stopped at the viewing boardwalks - erected along the river so you can watch the bears fish for salmon. The Pacific Salmon swim upstream to spawn and arrive anytime from end of June to the end of July. Unfortunately the fish hadn't arrived yet and the bears were still up in the mountains eating berries and hikers. The rangers had an extensive photo collection of bears viewed from the boardwalks proving they most definitely see them and all the rangers were carrying bear spray. We made it back to Hyder but didn't hang around for the independence Day celebrations as they were so late in the day. The finale of which was the 'Chicken s*** Board'. I had to ask what this was - they have a large board with numbers painted on. You pay for a number, they put a chicken on the board and if the chicken s***s on your number first you get a prize! There are no US customs at the border but there are Canadian customs for getting out of Hyder! We were duly stopped, the customs officer asked where we from and then wanted to talk about England in the world cup quarter finals (which we had only found out about the night before), he knew of West Bromwich Albion but supported and followed Liverpool. Good job there were 2 lanes and 2 customs officers as our line wasn't moving with our guy wanting to chew the fat about English football. He had actually refused to leave the office during the last England match letting his buddy do all the work. Back at Stewart it was another baking day - last year they only had 2 weeks without rain in the whole of the summer. We hoped to hike here, but the mountains are so tall and so steep that the only trails are down low and in the trees so we gave them a miss. Another day where we were told we would easily see bears and we saw none!